General

There has been much speculation about the safety of the many new mini jets now in development. It shocks me that there are more predictions about how these small jets will change aviation, including the safety record, than there is speculation about whether the airplanes can even be delivered at the prices some promise. But […]

Robert Goyer was on a flight back from Syracuse when the controller called him. “Let me tell you about your situation,” the controller offered. But Robert already had a pretty good idea. He’d been “looking ahead” and knew there were weather doings on his trip back to White Plains’ Westchester County Airport. He’d been in […]

It was a windy Sunday in March. I didn’t fly and I wasn’t happy about it. I could have flown if I had really wanted to, but I just didn’t get to go. My oldest daughter, Alix, was here for a weekend in Florida with her very likeable husband, Rob, and we’d been busy with […]

My simulator instructor grinned, “So, your captain has gone unconscious. It looks like he just had a heart attack. You’re flying. What do you do?” I knew it was a trick question, but I was a probationary pilot with less than a year at the airline. I felt obligated to give him a by-the-book answer. […]

It was a cool September evening when Tim Knutson caught up with me at Signature Aviation in Minneapolis. He had arrived in uniform, the black visor to his cap angled upward in a casual flair. Tim is a 737 copilot for my airline. We exchanged pleasantries and walked out the door, rolling our bags toward […]

Ed Graham, 19, is a college student, swim coach and lifeguard. The proceeds from the last two activities have gone into a private certificate and instrument rating and are now propelling Ed toward a commercial certificate and CFI. He flies out of Long Beach and John Wayne in Southern California. He has 250 flying hours, […]

It’s said that the good lord protects children and fools. Perhaps that explains it. For on some level, Clark Seaborn, Hank Galpin, Gary Underland and Ron Hackworth all know they must be fools. Who else, after all, would take on the challenge of taking a few scraps of rotting wood and twisted metal from planes […]

Melmoth 2 inherited its engine mount brackets and isolators-the rubber pads the engine is actually bolted to-from Melmoth 1, which had in turn acquired them, in 1971, from a Cessna Skymaster that was already far from new. It’s surprising that any rubber compound can retain a whiff of elasticity after 35 years or more in […]

I have never been more reluctant to pull back the power levers and start descent than I was on that remarkable Sunday afternoon. It meant that the trip of a lifetime was coming to an end and that my dream day was finite. You see, I was in the left seat of a brand new […]

There was a long list of things that needed to be done to Melmoth 2 before leaving for Oshkosh. One was to get a coat of paint onto the airplane. This I barely managed to accomplish in time, using roller, brush and a marine paint formulated for sailboats being finished, I suppose, at the ends […]